And I Know That I Miss You (And I Don't Even Know Your Name)
by alphayamergo
Summary: The Alchemists handled re-education a little differently, and now Sydney Sage no longer remembers that she was re-educated at all - right up until she runs into the Moroi that started it all.


**AN: so does anyone else remember that brief moment between Indigo Spell and Fiery Heart when we thought that re-education was a red herring and Sydney was going to have her memories erased? I dooooo.**

Sydney Sage sighed as she picked up her keys from the counter and headed for the door. Berlin was a busy city for the Alchemists as it was, but winter seemed to make the Strigoi bolder than ever, taking advantage of the longer nights to prey on more and more victims.

She pulled the hood on her coat up and over her head as she left the apartment building. She lived in the very heart of the city, only a few blocks away from both Alexanderplatz and Museum Island. She would have loved the proximity to the world-famous museums, but Alchemist work kept her too busy to visit often. She was heading the opposite way tonight though, out towards the nightclubs of Kreuzberg. It was the kind of visit that she was used to: her very first station, in Saint Petersburg, often had the same sort of calls.

By the time she reached the guardian who had placed the call, she already had grabbed the formula out of her bag and had it in hand. Her heart hammered in her chest and despite the light snow falling around her, her palms were so sweaty she almost dropped the small glass bottle she was holding. Even after three years of active service, interacting with dhampirs and Moroi never got any easier. The chemicals that dissolved Strigoi corpses were a welcome relief in her hand – after all, if a Moroi ever got too close, the chemicals would work just as well on them.

The guardian and Moroi she approached now though didn't look particularly threatening. The silver stake had been hidden away and both were standing by the Strigoi body, their hands stuck in pockets, looking like a movie character trying to act casual. Even Sydney couldn't help her amusement at the sight.

"Gentlemen," she greeted as she walked the final few feet to them. Both men turned to look at her, and that was the exact moment that Sydney Sage's life began to fall apart.

"Sage?" whispered the Moroi. His green eyes were wide. Next to him, the guardian's mouth had dropped open. The Moroi began to reach out towards her, and Sydney took a quick step backwards, out of reach.

"Sydney Sage, yes," said Sydney, keeping her voice icily polite. "And you would be?"

"Sage, it's _me_," said the Moroi, tugging his hat off his head and stepping forward so his face was illuminated by the light of the nightclub's sign. His eyes glowed green in the neon light. "It's Adrian. Your Adrian. And Eddie."

"I've never met you before in my life," said Sydney. Her skin crawled at the idea – _her_ Adrian? Her Moroi? It was enough to make any Alchemist sick. She shoved past him and emptied her glass container on to the Strigoi body. Without even stopping to see if the reaction worked, she turned and began to leave. The Moroi reached out and grabbed her arm, but she jerked her arm free. The sudden movement on the icy pavement unbalanced her, and she fell awkwardly on to her hip, only her arm out to break her fall. Pain shot through her wrist and waist.

"Christ, Sage, let me -" said Adrian, reaching down and taking her hand. She had taken her glove off to handle the chemicals – the last thing she needed was a chemical spill on her best pair of gloves – and his bare skin touched hers. Her skin tingled, the pain receding, and she snatched her hand away.

"What did you to do me?" demanded Sydney, struggling to her feet.

"Sydney, please," said the dhampir – Eddie. His voice cracked on the second word.

"What did they do to you?" whispered Adrian, tears forming in his emerald eyes.

"Nobody did anything to me, unless you mean you wielding your unholy magic on me," snapped Sydney, cradling her wrist against her chest. Her heart was still thumping hard in her chest. She wanted to check her hand, see if there was any mark left behind by the magic, but she couldn't tear her eyes away from Adrian's.

"Sage, you can't believe that I compelled you," said Adrian. "Not after everything we did. Please, Sydney."

Sydney's jaw worked in frustration. "I know you didn't compel me," she said. "I meant _healing_ me. You must be one of those unnatural spirit users."

That brought them both up short. "Sydney, do you know who I am?" asked Adrian.

"I just told you: I've never met you before," said Sydney. "Now if you excuse me, not all of us are on your forsaken schedule, and I would like to go home." She turned on her heel and began the walk back to the U-bahn, shoving her hands into the pockets of her coat so they couldn't see her balling her fists.

"Sydney, wait!" shouted Adrian. He caught up with her within a matter of steps, getting in front of her and blocking her route back to the station. "Do you remember Palm Springs at all?"

"I've never been to Palm Springs," snapped Sydney.

"Where were your placements?" questioned Adrian.

"Saint Petersburg, New Orleans, Saint Louis, then here," said Sydney. She didn't even know why she was still engaging him – the Moroi was clearly mad. They had reports about it, about spirit use driving its users insane. A dark voice in Sydney's head that had never sounded like her own whispered, _It's what they deserve for their unnatural abilities._

But his voice was desperate, a plaintive note in every word. Even Sydney couldn't ignore that voice, no matter who was speaking it, human or vampire. The urge to help, to ease his pain, was overwhelming.

"Saint Petersburg, New Orleans, _Palm Springs_, then here," countered Adrian. He fished his phone out of his pocket and opened up the gallery, swiping through the long string of photos. Sydney only caught glimpses of different thumbnails: a selfie of Adrian with a teenage girl with light brown curls, candid photos of an engagement party between who Sydney suspected was the Moroi Queen and her fiancé, some photos of the sights of Berlin and other cities of Europe. At last, he stopped at a photo of a girl, opening it to take up the entire screen. Sydney's breath caught.

It was a photo of _her_, in front of a large pool of water and surrounded by gardens. In the photo, Sydney was smiling, looking radiant with joy. Her hair was ever so slightly dishevelled, but the Sydney in the photo didn't care. Her body was facing the pool, but her head was turned back to the photographer, the light dancing in her eyes and across her lily. Sydney's hand was being held by someone outside of frame aside from the hand, pale even in the sunlight. But Sydney had never seen those gardens before, and she had no memory of the photo being taken.

"I don't know what kind of trick this is, but it ends here," said Sydney. She pushed past him, walking briskly and listening carefully for any sign of pursuit. Before she turned the corner, she risked a glance back: Adrian was still staring after her, his posture defeated, with Eddie resting a hand on his shoulder and watching after her as well.

Something in Sydney screamed to go back, to find out more about the photo, to know how they knew her. But that wasn't the Alchemist way, so she kept walking. She strained to hear footsteps behind her, unable to truly breath until she was safely back in her apartment, door locked behind her.

She undressed for bed quickly. The last to come off was her watch. It had been a gift from her father before she took her posting in Berlin. She stared down at the pale face, the numbers etched into in Alchemist gold. For some reason she didn't entirely understand, she picked it back up from her bedside table and threw it against the wall with a half-suppressed yell.

She didn't go back for it.

* * *

It was a sleepless night for Sydney, haunted by images that kept flickering through her dreams. She dreamed of the Moroi again, his green eyes hovering over her. She dreamed of a tiny dragon, small enough to fit into the palm of her hand, snuggling against her. She dreamed of flames enveloping a house, burning, burning, burning. She hadn't dreamed for a long time, but they seemed to have returned with a vengeance, nightmares overcoming her every time she closed her eyes. Sydney woke the next morning and, calmer despite her dreams, checked her watch. It had bounced off the wall and now laid on her bedroom floor, face down. She picked it up to inspect it. A sliver of a crack snaked down the face.

"Sorry, Dad," she whispered. She put it on to the top of her dresser carefully, not wanting to risk aggravate the crack any further.

The watch was one of her only connections to home. She didn't have any family in Berlin, or Europe at all. Carly was in graduate school back in the US, her mother working on cars somewhere in Utah, and her father and Zoe both had their placements in the States. It wasn't an unusual arrangement for Alchemists. Even Sydney's first internship had been in Russia. It didn't keep it from stinging, nor had it ever made her shake the feeling that she had been exiled.

It was a stupid feeling. Berlin would be a terrible place to exile someone to, purely because it was too nice a city to hate. If it _was_ an exile, she would have been sent somewhere she couldn't access wifi or phone service, no way to contact anyone else. Somewhere in the far north, maybe, or they would have assigned her as one of the Alchemists monitoring Moroi prisons. Being sent away wasn't an exile, it was business. Alchemists were sent where they were needed the most. It was as simple as that.

It was a thought that Sydney kept reminding herself of as she settled into her favourite coffee shop, an independent cafe that had wifi for her to work remotely on and that managed to get her latte _just right._ It was a thought that she kept reminding herself of because it was easier than thinking about what had happened last night.

She still didn't understand the photo. It could have been photoshopped, with the Moroi taking a photo of her he had found God knows where and putting it on to a background she didn't recognise. But that still raised two problems. The first was that she couldn't work out either a motive or how the two would have known she was an Alchemist in Berlin, let alone the one who answered their call. And the other…

Sydney couldn't remember ever being that happy, so happy that it seemed an inner flame lit her from within, radiating joy. Sydney's eyes had _shone_ in that photo. Sydney's eyes never shone. She was far too practical for that.

The door jingled open, and Sydney glanced up automatically. At the sight, she tried to duck behind her laptop, but it was too late. He'd spotted her. The dhampir from the night before slid into the booth beside her.

"Do you have any idea how many cafes I had to check before I found you?" he asked. "I knew I just had to follow the smell of coffee, but I had no idea how many cafes there were in Berlin."

"What do you want?" asked Sydney, unable to keep the wariness out of her voice.

"Adrian isn't here," said the guardian. "He would have been, but he completely crashed the moment we got back to the hotel." From the backpack he had been carrying, the guardian took out a tablet that he set on the table before Sydney. "I called Jill the moment we got back. We made this for you."

"What is this?" asked Sydney as the dhampir turned the screen on.

"Memories," said the guardian. He opened the gallery and pulled up an album. Sydney began to flick through the photos despite herself. Each one had her in it: leading a Moroi in high heels across the room, standing amongst a group of Moroi and dhampirs out the front of a mini golf course, posing in a red dress that looked suspiciously like a Greek peplos between the guardian sitting next to Sydney now and the Moroi girl, and one of her hugging the Moroi girl while laughing.

The most, though, of was her with Adrian. There was one of them seated next to each other at some kind of formal event, one of them dancing in a ballroom Sydney couldn't remember seeing, even a few selfies together. But the one that made her stop wasn't a photo, but a painting. The painting was of Sydney herself, in the red dress, surrounded by a cloud of yellow and purple. "What is this?"

"Adrian called it the _Iolanthe_," said Eddie – because that was his name. Sydney knew it instinctively, like it was one of the simple facts of the universe. The sky was blue, grass was green, and this man's name was Eddie Castile.

"Purple flower," whispered Sydney.

"What?" asked Eddie.

Sydney cleared her throat, which had begun to feel strangely tight. "Iolanthe. It means purple flower in Greek."

"Adrian's an artist," explained Eddie. "He painted it while we were all still in Palm Springs."

_I was never in Palm Springs. _The words were on Sydney's lips, but she couldn't move them. Her finger traced her outline in the painting. He made her look fierce in a way she had never felt in reality. "I don't understand," she eventually forced herself to say.

"You were taken from us," said Eddie. "I was there. If I'd known… I never would have left you, Sydney, if you had told me the truth. You have to know that. I would have kept you safe." _You couldn't have,_ thought Sydney, some certainty driving her.

"Who took me?" she asked.

"The Alchemists," said Eddie.

Something inside Sydney snapped. She didn't know what, didn't know how. She just knew that something had changed in her, some essential, unnameable thing. With those words, everything had changed.

"You're lying," said Sydney, slamming her laptop shut and gathering her things. She stood up jerkily, her bag grasped tightly in one hand.

"Sydney, please," tried Eddie, getting up to follow her, but Sydney just slammed the café door behind her. She started walking away from the café, turning corners at random until she was certain that nobody was following her.

She took out her phone, opening up the screen and bringing up the contacts list. She should call the Alchemists, she knew. She should tell them what was happening.

She didn't call the Alchemists.

Instead, she dropped her things back at her apartment and walked to the Pergamon Museum. For the first time since she had touched down in Berlin, she let herself visit the museum. She spent hours walking from room to room, gazing up at the Pergamon Altar, the Ishtar Gate, the Market Gate of Miletus. Room after room was filled with artefacts, fragile and ancient. _This is from before the Alchemists_, she couldn't help thinking. _Before the divide ever happened._

She left the museum only at closing time, walking back out into the Lustgarten. It was dark, but the streetlights still offered enough light to see by. She couldn't see the moon, hidden as it was by the clouds that were gifting Berlin with a light powder of snow. She came to stand in the centre of the park, looking up at the cathedral like it held all the answers of the universe. _The centre_, she thought. There was something about the centre. Something truer than anything the Alchemists had ever told her.

"The centre," she whispered.

"The centre will hold," said somebody behind her. She turned around, already knowing who it was. Adrian. Her Adrian.

"I can't quite remember," she said.

He stepped forward and took her hand in his. This time, she didn't fight him, didn't trip to snatch her hand away. Her hand still tingled, but not from magic. "What did they do to you?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Sydney. "I think – I remember lying to Eddie and making him leave me. I remember Zoe and my father – but nothing after that."

"Do you remember me?" asked Adrian.

"Of course I do," said Sydney. There was so little she knew for certain right now, but that was one of them. He was Adrian, her partner, her other half. "You're the star that guides me home, the breath of warmth on a winter's night. You're my flame in the dark." She stepped closer, tangling her fingers with his. "You're my Adrian."

He didn't need any further prompting. Adrian leant down and kissed her. A hundred memories raced through her head at the act, but she ignored them. This was going to be a memory all of its own, the moment that she came back to him. She lifted her free hand and slung it around his neck, dragging him closer. His lips were soft under hers, and his body slotted against hers like a missing piece. This was the truth. This was Adrian.

When she finally separated from him, she stayed close, resting her forehead against his and closing her eyes. "The centre will hold," she whispered. "Because we are the centre." She opened her eyes, and Adrian's smile was blinding. "Rome's only a two hour flight away."

"Are you suggesting we run away together, Sage?" asked Adrian. His eyes were still blazing green.

"I'm suggesting that I am never losing you again," said Sydney, "so it's time that we put some of those escape plans to use." Adrian nodded. He pressed a long kiss to her forehead, soft as a feather.

"It's time to go home," he said. She smiled. Standing here, wrapped in his arms, she already had.

* * *

"This would have been a good place for us to escape to," said Sydney. She was packing the last of her clothes into her suitcase while Adrian lazed on her bed behind her. "The museums here are incredible, and there's a great art scene. Might be a bit expensive for a student and a starving artist, but we could have made do."

She only realised that Adrian had left the bed when his arms snaked around her torso and he pressed a kiss to the side of her neck, where her hair only came in short, wispy curls, regardless of what she did to them. "Anywhere will be a good place to escape to, so long as I have you."

Sydney smiled, turning in his arms and looping her own around his neck. "We should probably still go somewhere that Jill, Eddie and the others can still visit us."

"Carefully, though," said Adrian. "I'm not letting the Alchemists find and take you again."

"They have to realise that re-education is useless," said Sydney. "I've already broken free of it once."

"Maybe," said Adrian. "But I'm not risking you. Not now, not ever."

"We'll be careful," promised Sydney. Adrian kissed her again, and any hope of finishing packing anytime soon went out the window. Adrian backed her toward the dresser, his hands moving under her jumper. They were cool from the wintry air, and she almost slapped them away before she thought better of it. Her back hit the dresser and something fell from it, hitting her shoulder on its way down. She broke away to check.

The watch stared up at her accusingly, the numbers on it looking more Alchemist gold than ever. Sydney's breath caught as she bent down to pick it up. "It was this," she realised.

Adrian took it from her, studying it closely. "It's brimming in compulsion." He looked up at her, rage sparking in his eyes. "That's _sick._ They call us evil, when they can just wipe out entire parts of your _life -_"

Sydney summoned a fireball to her hand and held it out for Adrian. He dropped the watch back into her cupped hands. They watched together as she heated the flames from red to yellow to blue and the leather band of the watch burnt in her hands. When all that was left was a shrivelled band and a scorched face, she dropped it to the floor and slammed her foot over it, smashing the glass into a million little pieces.

Adrian looked back up at her, a smile on his lips. "My brilliant girl."

"I think there's one more thing we should do before we leave," said Sydney innocently. "Something that'll _really_ ruin the apartment for the next Alchemist that comes here."

Adrian's eyes widened, his hands tightening on her hips. Then he carefully arranged his face into an expression of utmost seriousness. "The Alchemists were right," said Adrian, solemnly. "I've been a bad influence on you." Sydney opened her mouth to laugh, but it was swallowed by Adrian's lips crashing down and on to hers, and she no longer had any time to think about it.

The Alchemists had tried to separate them. They had stolen a year of Sydney's life from her, but it wasn't enough. The centre had held. The centre would always hold.


End file.
